Voodoo Eyes by Nick Stone Read Free Book Online Page B

the country to restore its deposed president in the name of democracy. Someone somewhere in Washington had decided to take the opportunity to free up the prisons, by very quietly deporting all Haitian criminals taking up valuable cell space. As Boukman was not an American citizen, he got a plane ride home, the argument being that it was cheaper to ship him than to kill him. At the time, Haiti had no prisons, no courts and no police, just the occupying US Army, and it was too busy stopping the country from sliding into anarchy to play cop. So when they arrived back home, the expelled criminals were set free, unleashed on their vulnerable, near destitute countrymen like starving wolves in a sheep pen. No checks, no balances, no one in authority even crossing their fingers.
    Max had been at a club outside Port-au-Prince, when Boukman had crept up behind him, taken his gun out of his holster and held it to his head, smiling. Someone had snapped the picture.
    The photograph later turned up in one of the two bags he carried that $20 million reward home in. Boukman had written him a message on the back: ‘You give me reason to live.’
    Max still didn’t get what he meant, but he knew one thing for sure: Boukman didn’t want to kill him. He’d had ample opportunity to get to him in Haiti and he hadn’t.
    So as far as Max was concerned, it was over.
    He’d put the partially burned photograph in a safety deposit box and tossed the key into the ocean.
    In 2002 Max went back to work as a private detective. He put an ad in the Herald and set up a website. He got his first call within a week, a woman who wanted to know if he handled divorce cases. He figured he was well qualified, so said, yes, how could he help.
    Insurance paid out $350,000 on the house. It was all the money he had left.

4
    Max made himself a four-shot espresso with Bustelo coffee and took the brew into his office. He sat down, turned on his computer and waited for it to power up. His desk was otherwise bare, save a phone and a framed photograph of him with the Liston family taken the previous Christmas. Since splitting with Tameka, he’d spent almost every public holiday and birthday with them. Joe’s kids called him ‘Uncle Max’.
    The penthouse’s workspace looked out on the city – a spray of multi-coloured lights caught in the burnt-ochre wash of thousands of street lamps. He could see all the way to the illuminated towers that formed the Downtown skyline. In a few hours the same view would become a dull, flat sweep of hard greys and beiges, concrete, glass and extinguished neon. For somewhere so famous and popular, Miami was short on memorable landmarks. It had nothing that instantly defined it, no cultural shorthand symbol – no Statue of Liberty, no White House, no Hollywood sign. It was just beaches, hotels and palm trees – any ocean resort anywhere hot and affluent. Maybe that was the point. Maybe that was all there really was. A blank canvas. Miami was what you made of it.
    Max called Emerson Prescott’s cell. He left a message asking his client to call him, and followed it up with an email. It was the way he operated, confirming everything in writing just in case he got sued.
    When he was done, he checked his inbox.
    Nothing.
    *
    The following morning Max stood on the gym steps and looked up and down 7th Avenue. Boarded-up stores on either side, a row of burned-out or boarded-up houses opposite. Beyond them a long stretch of open ground, all dirt, wild untended grass and piled trash.
    Eldon had been shot around midday on Tuesday October 28. Broad daylight. Someone must have seen or heard something.
    Or had they?
    In a place like Liberty City, where a wrong look could land you in a sea of shit, people tended to mind their own business, which meant they saw and heard only what they wanted to and nothing else.
    Then there was the triggerman. With his skills, he’d be nothing less than a consummate pro. He would have calculated his ins and outs,